MENDELSSOHN: STRING QUARTETS OP. 13 & OP. 80; 4 PIECES OP. 81 - ELIAS STRING QUARTET

 Mendelssohn String Quartets Op.13, Op.80 & 4 Pieces Op.81 Elias String Quartet(Sara Bitlloch – violin Donald Grant – violinMartin Saving – viola Marie Bitlloch – cello) “the searing intensity of the Elias’s playing lays bare their shock value (of these Quartets) … Twenty years separate the two quartets, and what a distance he travelled in that time. Yet Op.13 was already an extraordinarily confident piece .. In the Elias’s reading there is a wonderful story-telling aspect to the Intermezzo … in the remarkable Quartet #6 Op.80 the Elias clearly have four powerful personalities at work – how much more they bring out the heart-stopping melodies that seem to flow so effortlessly – apt given that he wrote it in the wake of his sister Fanny’s death … melodies in such movements as the gentle, consolatory theme that opens the slow movement of the Sixth, or the second of the Four Pieces (Op.81)”(Gramophone) String Quartet No.2 in A minor, Op.13 (1827)[1] I. Adagio- allegro vivae 8:16[2